Married to a Christian

[Norfolk And Chance]

I'm not one of the last three posters, am I still allowed a go? Because that's really easy.

You believe in the power of prayer because you got a small bonus at work that lifted you out of a minor financial hiccup that was your own fault for getting into in the first place. Despite the fact that you explicitly told us that your boss requested the bonus for you long before you got into that financial difficulty (certainly long before you prayed for assistance), and despite the fact that millions of prayers go unanswered every single day across the world, you actually used this anecdote in direct response to the challenge to provide 'EVIDENCE THAT GOD EXISTS', even though you should well know that one person's anecdotal evidence is flimsy and unverifiable.

What do I win?

$10.

[Cinjin]

And I'd love for any of the 3 of you to point out any arguement I've presented that was illogical, irrational or that I clung to irrational without admitting I was wrong on the entirety of this site.

@Cin- I haven't been schooled in any debate or apologetic arts, either formally or informally, I just read my Bible, lexicon and concordance regularly. Follow that with questioning, reason and research and here I am. I have zero excuses, rebuttals, arguments preplanned and resent the implication and the implications that I were intellectually dishonest enough to hold my ground against sound reasoning. As far as your point I get it the, ill-informed are easy to deconvert and I agree.

Atheists view my deistic belief as foolish at best and idiotic at worst. I feel the same way about all the revealed religions of the world. You see, we all resent things that are told to us by those who believe their viewpoint to be 100% true. Unfortunately, both of us will always feel the other is either arrogant, ignorant, or brainwashed wherever we come into disagreement. I cannot apologize for your resentment of what I believe to be fact any more than you can do the same for me.

That being said, I would still be willing to attempt to deconvert you if you were so inclined to debate me ... I merely said that success would be highly unlikely.

[tackattack]

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And I'd love for any of the 3 of you to point out any arguement I've presented that was illogical, irrational or that I clung to irrational without admitting I was wrong on the entirety of this site.

I'm not one of the last three posters, am I still allowed a go? Because that's really easy.

You believe in the power of prayer because you got a small bonus at work that lifted you out of a minor financial hiccup that was your own fault for getting into in the first place. Despite the fact that you explicitly told us that your boss requested the bonus for you long before you got into that financial difficulty (certainly long before you prayed for assistance), and despite the fact that millions of prayers go unanswered every single day across the world, you actually used this anecdote in direct response to the challenge to provide 'EVIDENCE THAT GOD EXISTS', even though you should well know that one person's anecdotal evidence is flimsy and unverifiable.

What do I win?

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Nothing! You lose! Good day sir! <takes off willy wonka hat>
Of vourse you more than willing to chime in, I didn't intend for it to be exclusive.

You're misrepresenting my position though. I believe in the power of prayer because of many serendipitous and direct answers I attribute to God. I beleive God knows what we need before we ask and since he is outside of our time, can directly inlfuence multiple threads of cause and effect prior to our request to make the answer seem instantaneous. I acknowledge the fact that millions of prayers go unanswered every single day across the world. I acknowledge that millions of prayers do get answered every day as well, the only difference between them, IMO, I stated as qualifying criteriea for effective prayer. I used this as one type of evidence that God existed, with the qualifier that the type of evidence didn't matter prior to the discussion, per request. I think this is now well derailed from the OP. Feel free to PM me or start another thread if you wish to continue this.

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And I'd love for any of the 3 of you to point out any arguement I've presented that was illogical, irrational or that I clung to irrational without admitting I was wrong on the entirety of this site.

@Cin- I haven't been schooled in any debate or apologetic arts, either formally or informally, I just read my Bible, lexicon and concordance regularly. Follow that with questioning, reason and research and here I am. I have zero excuses, rebuttals, arguments preplanned and resent the implication and the implications that I were intellectually dishonest enough to hold my ground against sound reasoning. As far as your point I get it the, ill-informed are easy to deconvert and I agree.

Atheists view my deistic belief as foolish at best and idiotic at worst. I feel the same way about all the revealed religions of the world. You see, we all resent things that are told to us by those who believe their viewpoint to be 100% true. Unfortunately, both of us will always feel the other is either arrogant, ignorant, or brainwashed wherever we come into disagreement. I cannot apologize for your resentment of what I believe to be fact any more than you can do the same for me.

That being said, I would still be willing to attempt to deconvert you if you were so inclined to debate me ... I merely said that success would be highly unlikely.

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I don't feel you are arrogant, ignorant, or brainwashed. Nor do I resent you for your religious views. I resent the unbased assertion you made about what I believed. Afte I get back from Disney I might just clear my plate enough to take you up on an informal debate.

[ElDinero]

I really don't think I was misrepresenting your position at all. But let's have a look and see if your argument is 'rational'.

I believe in the power of prayer because of many serendipitous and direct answers I attribute to God.

Why do you attribute them to God?

I beleive God knows what we need before we ask

Evidence?

and since he is outside of our time

Evidence?

the answer seem instantaneous. I acknowledge the fact that millions of prayers go unanswered every single day across the world. I acknowledge that millions of prayers do get answered every day as well

Evidence that the prayers were answered by God and the problems didn't get solved in some other, natural way?

You're right, that was an incredibly rational argument. You might want to rethink your challenge to Cinjin et al. You wouldn't know a rational argument if it presented strong evidence for its own existence and cause.

Basically what you've got there is your good ol' fashioned argument from incredulity. I think this discussion is fine in here, or we can move it back to the original thread if you wish.

[Norfolk And Chance]

Tack-en apart yet again by El Dinero.

[tackattack]

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I really don't think I was misrepresenting your position at all. But let's have a look and see if your argument is 'rational'.

I believe in the power of prayer because of many serendipitous and direct answers I attribute to God.

Why do you attribute them to God?

I beleive God knows what we need before we ask

Evidence?

and since he is outside of our time

Evidence?

the answer seem instantaneous. I acknowledge the fact that millions of prayers go unanswered every single day across the world. I acknowledge that millions of prayers do get answered every day as well

Evidence that the prayers were answered by God and the problems didn't get solved in some other, natural way?

You're right, that was an incredibly rational argument. You might want to rethink your challenge to Cinjin et al. You wouldn't know a rational argument if it presented strong evidence for its own existence and cause.

Basically what you've got there is your good ol' fashioned argument from incredulity. I think this discussion is fine in here, or we can move it back to the original thread if you wish.

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1-Why do you attribute them to God? Because I feel that is the author of my faith. I could call Him, Zul, Thor, FSM, Satan or anything else to make you feel better. I attribute it to the creator God I worship because he would be the simplest and most reasonable explination from my world view that would hold the power to do that.

2- Evidence for beleiving God knows what we need before we ask?
Biblical Exegesis and personal experience

3- Evidence he is outside of our time? It is irrational/illogical to believe that a creator God that created prior to the start of time would then be constrained by it.

4- Evidence that the prayers were answered by God and the problems didn't get solved in some other, natural way?If there is an answer to a prayer in someone's life it's always a natural way as that's a broad term and everything that can happen to us would be natural. Miraculous healings and events that break probability are at best supranaturalm but do not exclude that some part of the solution had to be natural in some way. This misses the point as we're not speaking about the mechanisms though, but the reasons.

If you really want to talk about evidence you're going to have to clearly define the criterea for it. I've asked again for a standard in our discussion. You're wanting material evidence that's reliable and meet a rigorous burden of proof. I know full well I can't meet that level of evidence for God, which is why I continuously ask the bar to be set. I think the standards are impossible to attain and aren't relative to the proof anyways. It would be like me asking you to think about a cheeseburger and then prove to me you were thinking about a cheeseburger. I know lots of people will have fun with that analogy, but hopefully you get the point.

[Minimalist]

which is why I continuously ask the bar to be set.

Um, no Tacky. What you continuously ask is that the bar be set lower. I doubt you will find many of us who would stretch the definition of "evidence" to include self-delusion and wishful-thinking.

[ElDinero]

You don't need to know where the bar is set, tack. Think about what evidence you would need from a Muslim or a Hindu to convince you that their choice is correct, and you've probably stumbled across what I need to believe in yours.

You say you could refer to your god as Zeus or whatever, well then why not do it? Why isn't it Zeus, apart from the world view that you already possess? Utter nonsense.

I think it's worth emphasising the point that you were trying to make, that you are a rational person with rational arguments. And so far we've got special pleading, argument from incredulity and argument from personal experience. A trinity of highly unimpressive and irrational arguments, and why you think that's rational, I have no clue. Shape up. Put yourself in my shoes, or imagine the same arguments being made by any other religious type, and tell me if you'd be convinced.

When you say you've had a prayer answered, I'm asking for something that could not conceivably have happened if not for divine intervention. Here are some examples:

You getting a bonus at work = not a miracle
Your kid getting better a bit earlier than expected = not a miracle
A cancer going into remission = not a miracle

A man's leg growing back having been cut off = a miracle
A river of water turning into blood instantaneously (claimed to have happened) = a miracle
A bush spontaneously combusting and talking (claimed to have happened) = a miracle

There's your bar. If you think I'm being unreasonable, get on your knees and ask your all powerful God to stop being so fucking limited in his powers.

[tackattack]

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which is why I continuously ask the bar to be set.

Um, no Tacky. What you continuously ask is that the bar be set lower. I doubt you will find many of us who would stretch the definition of "evidence" to include self-delusion and wishful-thinking.

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You don't need to know where the bar is set, tack. Think about what evidence you would need from a Muslim or a Hindu to convince you that their choice is correct, and you've probably stumbled across what I need to believe in yours.

You say you could refer to your god as Zeus or whatever, well then why not do it? Why isn't it Zeus, apart from the world view that you already possess? Utter nonsense.

I think it's worth emphasising the point that you were trying to make, that you are a rational person with rational arguments. And so far we've got special pleading, argument from incredulity and argument from personal experience. A trinity of highly unimpressive and irrational arguments, and why you think that's rational, I have no clue. Shape up. Put yourself in my shoes, or imagine the same arguments being made by any other religious type, and tell me if you'd be convinced.

When you say you've had a prayer answered, I'm asking for something that could not conceivably have happened if not for divine intervention. Here are some examples:

You getting a bonus at work = not a miracle
Your kid getting better a bit earlier than expected = not a miracle
A cancer going into remission = not a miracle

A man's leg growing back having been cut off = a miracle
A river of water turning into blood instantaneously (claimed to have happened) = a miracle
A bush spontaneously combusting and talking (claimed to have happened) = a miracle

There's your bar. If you think I'm being unreasonable, get on your knees and ask your all powerful God to stop being so fucking limited in his powers.

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I don't call my God Zeus, because Zeus already has a definition. I don't think my God throws lightning bolts or reigns over olympian gods or poisoned or even had a father of his own), my definition best fits with the Abrahamic God.

If your standard is for naturally impossible I have nothing I can give you from personal experience. However what about someone who can see without pupils, bodies that don't decay or statues that bleed, cry and sweat?

I understand the reservations of a lot of the skeptics here to not consider personal experience as any kind of evidence. The problems I have with that are that then I either am delusional, a liar or have no evidence. I have reasons for my belief, and they're founded in observation and experience and were reasoned. I understand that atheists don't want to accept them as evidence for them to believe, however they are completely valid reasons for me to believe and thus qualify for at, the very least, subjective indicative evidence to me. I don't think any hard atheist on here could ever accept personal experience as evidence for something as grandeous of a conclusion as God. I'm OK with that, but what do you give faith to and what do you not give faith to? I'm not saying that something mysterious has to be God or supernatural, but it seems like you and others are saying something mysterious can't possibly work or be true.

[ElDinero]

If your standard is for naturally impossible I have nothing I can give you from personal experience. However what about someone who can see without pupils, bodies that don't decay or statues that bleed, cry and sweat?

I am a glutton for punishment, aren't I? Go on, let's see it. Even IF true (which I doubt), none would be proof of a God, just of something pretty weird.